


My Love is Written on Your Face

by AliceLiddle



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Inspired by Art, M/M, Simon can have no impulse control - as a treat, Soul Pens, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29689560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceLiddle/pseuds/AliceLiddle
Summary: I watch as Penny bites her lip, internal struggle written across her face, then grin at her as she gives in and reaches into her bag to pull out a blue felt tip pen.“Don’t do anything rash, okay? Just start with something simple, you don’t want them to suddenly get a novel on their hands!”I take the pen from her and uncap it, and suddenly I can smell the ink. It’s a pleasant smell, with a bit of citrus mixed in, and a familiarity I can’t place calms my nerves a little.I’m going to get to meet my soulmate.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 5
Kudos: 133





	My Love is Written on Your Face

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by an incredible piece of art the very talented @henreyettah did - [go look at it!](https://henreyettah.tumblr.com/post/638976259291070465/my-secret-snowflake-comic-for-naobromi-over-on)
> 
> I love soulmate AUs in every single form, and after seeing this piece I couldn't stop thinking about how Simon and Baz would make it to that point in their relationship. (SPOILER ALERT: They get together in the end! Shocker!) I wrote the whole fic in just a few days, and then didn't touch it for almost two months. I am finally posting it though, in honor of Baz's birthday - just like Rainbow, I also play favorites, and I love Baz the most ❤
> 
> I need to say a big 'thank you!' to [annabellelux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabellelux/pseuds/annabellelux) and [Caity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caitybug/pseuds/Caitybug) for being incredible betas for me - if you enjoy this fic you can thank them (especially annabellelux for helping me fix the entire first half!), and if you should encounter any mistakes I take sole responsibility for those 😂

**Simon**

Watford is a fairly small school, all things considered. I definitely attended much larger public schools when I was younger, and I’m used to being surrounded by other people. Today, however, the halls seem especially full as I try to find Penny before our next class. I narrowly avoid being pushed into Agatha (we both avoid making eye contact), and I scan even more frantically for Penny. “Penny!” I yell across the crowded hallway once I see her ponytail bobbing along. She winces at my loudness, but ignores the curious looks from our classmates and pushes her way through the throng of students changing classes until she’s at my side.

“Are you alright, Simon? I just saw Agatha, and she said that you…”

She trails off, and I know that she’s trying to spare my feelings, despite her late attempt.

I was so certain that if I survived all of this, Agatha and I would get married, and I could have a happily-ever-after of my own. Agatha’s walking away down the corridor now though, and her words to me from this morning are echoing in my head.

_“I’m sorry Simon, but I just don’t think we would be happy. And besides, I’m not your soulmate. Another break won’t change that. We can still be friends, though.”_

“I’m fine—I mean, no, I’m not, Agatha just broke up with me and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now after everything is over—but that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

Penny’s forehead wrinkles, and she rubs my arm comfortingly, but she doesn’t interrupt.

“Is there a spell that allows two people to trade places?”

Now her face lights up.

“Oh! Are you starting to work on your new spell for the end-of-the-year project?”

“No, I was just thinking that if there was one, we could use it to figure out where Baz is. I could switch places with him, and maybe convince Agatha through him that they’re not right for each other so she would—”

Penny’s face falls.

“Simon. You reached your Baz quota for the day before you even finished your breakfast, you need to focus on something else— _anything else_ —please.”

“But Penny, he—”

“ _No_ , Simon, your fixation on Basilton isn’t healthy, and unless you can prove that he presents _a clear and present danger_ , you need to talk about something else.”

Fine. I’ll research spells later in the library. Or I’ll get Penny to tell me first thing tomorrow morning, when I’m allowed to talk about Baz again.

“Alright, fine, sorry. What about soulmates?” 

Agatha’s earlier remark about the two of us not being soulmates is still lingering in my head, dredging up the conversation Penny and I were having right before the Humdrum snatched us up at the end of last semester.

_“Simon, why on earth did you think it would be a good idea to study by writing your notes on your hands?”_

_“Because I kept losing my notecards, and this way I can study no matter where I am.”_

_“Yes, but now it just looks like you’re trying to cheat. Also, what if you get ink poisoning?”_

_“You sound just like the nuns at one of the care homes.”_

_“They were probably right, then.”_

_“But it wasn’t even my fault back then! I got in trouble for writing on myself all the time, and I never actually did anything! The words would just appear, and then they’d tell me to go wash them off. At one point they even confiscated all of the markers and pens, but it kept happening.”_

_“It was probably your soulmate!” “My_ what _?”_

_“Your soulmate. Hasn’t anyone told you by now? I thought that Agatha… Never mind, the point is, it was probably your soulmate trying to get in touch with you. Everyone has a soulmate, but only mages know about it. A few generations back, a really powerful mage created a spell that, when combined with a special ink, allows whatever you draw on your skin to show up on your soulmate’s body in the same place. People can buy Soul Pens, that’s how most mages meet the person they’re meant to be with.”_

_“When were you planning on telling me about this? Do you have a pen that I can borrow?”_

_“Not on me, but I’ll let you use mine once we go back. Oh, and we can go back right now,” Penny glanced at something behind me, “Look, there’s Basil and he’s not doing anything wrong.”_

_“Not doing anything wrong?” I whipped around to glare at my arch-nemesis holding hands with Agatha. “Penny, he’s holding hands with my girlfriend!”_

Penny looks startled at my abrupt change in conversation.

“You want to talk about soulmates?”

“Yeah, I never got to try out your pen, and Agatha just told me that she’s confident we aren’t soulmates, and I’d like to know a bit more about this whole thing.”

I watch as Penny bites her lip, internal struggle written across her face, then grin at her as she gives in and reaches into her bag to pull out a blue felt tip pen.

“Don’t do anything rash, okay? Just start with something simple, you don’t want them to suddenly get a novel on their hands!”

I take the pen from her and uncap it, and suddenly I can smell the ink. It’s a pleasant smell, with a bit of citrus mixed in, and a familiarity I can’t place calms my nerves a little. _I’m going to get to meet my soulmate._ _Hi_

It’s all I can think of to write, but I print it in two big letters, right on my wrist, trying to make my handwriting as neat as possible (Baz always complains that it’s borderline illegible).

Penny and I stare at my wrist for a few moments, and when it becomes clear that nothing is going to happen I look back up to make eye contact with her.

“They may not have their pen on them right now,” she says, with an encouraging smile. "Give it some time."

So I do.

I give them some time during Magic Words, and then some more during Elocution. I add a smile beside my _Hi_ during lunch, and then give them some more time. By dinner I’m trying not to get frustrated, but I can feel my magic starting to boil over, and a few people cough as I walk past them in the dining hall. Penny takes one glance at the marks on my arm and the empty space beside them and immediately hands me a plate of roast beef.

The next few weeks pass in a blur of classes, silence from the Mage, and blue scribbles on my arms. I still haven’t gotten a response from my soulmate, but I’m not going to give up. It took me more than a decade to write back to my soulmate, I can give them a few weeks to reply to me.

Unfortunately, while I wait for my soulmate to respond, I don’t have anything good to distract myself with. The Mage won’t talk to me, so any time I think about him I feel worried or angry and decide to avoid thinking about him, my classes are going worse than they usually do, and I never feel like studying so I can’t find a distraction there, Agatha is no longer dating me or even hanging out with Penny and me, and Baz is still missing and any time I think about where he might be I talk to Penny about it and then she yells at me (but I can’t stop thinking about where Baz is. I just can’t).

By the end of October I can tell that Penny is getting worried about me, but I don’t want to tell her that my soulmate still hasn’t answered me. If I say something, it will just make it too real, and I’ll have to accept that maybe my soulmate gave up on me, or doesn’t want me, or… maybe I should just add my soulmate to the list of things I’m not going to think about.

I still write all over myself every night though. After dinner, all alone in my room (well, Baz and my room) in Mummers, I write over every square inch of skin I can manage. I write greetings on my arms, and questions on my legs, and then I scrawl more personal things across my chest - my soulmate, if they’re even reading these, now knows that I’m worried about failing Elocution this semester because my stutter has resurfaced on a few of the key spells we’ve been working on, and they know that I feel lonely and scared sometimes, and they even know that I’m occasionally worried about Baz, because it’s been two months and he’s still not back, and anything evil probably would have happened by now, right?

I fall asleep with ink covering my body, and then wait until the last possible moment to shower it off in the morning. Twice now I’ve missed breakfast because of the change in my routine, and each time Penny’s brows knit together when I ran in late to our first class, but I just want my soulmate to come back.

**Baz**

Numpties. I was kidnapped by _numpties_. And somehow, that wasn’t the worst part of the whole ordeal.

No, instead, not only did my Aunt Fiona have to rescue me from a _coffin_ , in a _numpty den_ , but she also found me covered in blue ink from my _soulmate_. Then, before I could read any of it, it started to wash away, only giving me a glimpse at a few words.

_Lonely_

_Worried_

_Spells_

_I miss_

I wanted to cry, because the universe just couldn’t be so unfair as to finally give me a soulmate that was willing to talk to me, only to wash away all of their words before I could read them. Fiona just clasped me in a tobacco and leather scented hug and led me back to her car, and I spent most of the drive back home staring vacantly out the window.

The words do return. In fact, they return every single night while I’m recovering, and while my body heals, the words do their best to shatter what remains of my heart.

I have loved Simon Snow hopelessly for so long that even the promise of my soulmate isn’t enough to turn my head. Instead, the idea of loving someone who isn’t him disgusts me. I try to read everything written on my body at first, contorting myself and craning my neck to see every single word written in plain blue ink. But then, I realize that I’m reading the words in the hope that they were penned by Simon himself, and I can’t let myself indulge any more. Simon Snow is not my soulmate. Some unlucky person is out there waiting for me, and they’re going to be disappointed. Some unfortunate soul has a vampire for a soulmate who is incapable of loving them, and that poor person is not Simon Snow.

So, when Daphne brings me a packet of Soul Pens to write back, I leave the box unopened.

The night before I return to Watford, my skin stays blank.

**Simon**

I gave up on my soulmate on Halloween. I looked around at all of my classmates and professors celebrating together, everyone looking so happy, and I decided that I was going to stop dwelling on something I would probably never have. I packed all the thoughts of my soulmate up into a box and shoved it into the back of my mind where I intended to leave it untouched.

Then, Baz came back the next day during breakfast, and all thoughts of soulmates flew out of my head without any effort at all.

I’ve spent the last three days following him and interrogating him, trying to figure out where he was and what he was doing. The worry I had started to feel when his absence drew on is now mixed with anger, because he’s clearly not okay, and he also won’t tell me why. Additionally, he’s been avoiding me so I can’t even properly question him like I want to. I just end up shouting things after him as I chase him down the hallways and dodge glares from other students.

When I do finally manage to properly confront him in our room, it doesn’t really go like I intend. I catch him sneaking back in after eating rats in the Catacombs (I assume), and I sit straight up in bed the second he passes me.

“Where were you?” I sound more worried than I mean to, but he still seems rattled by my question.

“That’s none of your business, Snow, go back to sleep.” He doesn’t sound like himself either, his voice is thin and the exhaustion in his words is apparent.

“It is my business, if you were doing something awful, then it’s my job to stop it.”

“And if I wasn’t?” “What?”

“I wasn’t doing anything awful, Snow; I wasn’t doing anything at all. I just wasn’t here. It doesn’t concern you, or anyone else, so just fuck off back to the Mage or whatever innocent creature you’re going to slay this week.”

He turns sharply on his heel to stalk into the bathroom, scooping up his pajamas on the way. I listen to the creak of the shower turning on, and then start to doze at the soothing sounds of water hitting the tiles.

When Baz comes back out in a warm cloud of cedar and bergamot I’m almost fully asleep, but I try to rouse myself to ask what I am certain is the most pressing question.

“If you weren’t doing anything, then why weren’t you here?” “I just wasn’t.”

His answer doesn’t make sense, but I’m not sure if that’s because I’m mostly asleep, or if it’s because he’s hiding something.

“But you’re supposed to be here.”

I fall asleep before I can hear his response.

**Baz**

Simon Snow is persistent even in his sleep, demanding to know where I was while he’s still drooling on his pillow.

 _“But you’re supposed to be here,”_ he says, and I have to agree with him. I am supposed to be here, no matter how much it hurts me.

“I know,” I whisper, once I’m certain he can’t hear me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t.”

**Simon**

“Simon, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Agatha stops me outside of Elocution, and even though we’ve been on good terms this past month, she suddenly seems nervous. She won’t make eye contact with me, and she keeps brushing back her hair, even though it isn’t falling in her face.

“Christmas break is coming up, and I know that you usually stay with me for the holidays, but I just think that it might be too weird this year.” “Agatha-” I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say, but I can’t let her un-invite me. Penny’s mom can’t take more than a few days of me in their house, and Watford closes during the break. I don’t have anywhere else to go.

“I’m sorry Simon, but I really do think this is for the best.” It feels like she’s breaking up with me all over again, but somehow, this feels even worse. When she broke up with me, I was worried about my future, but about a much more distant future that I might not even live to see. Right now, I’m worried about the future that’s two weeks away and I may find myself homeless for.

“Right. Fine. Sure.”

She gives me an awkward half smile, and then heads into the classroom to take her seat on the opposite side of the room, leaving me alone to figure out my miserable Christmas plans.

Halfway through class, I’m idly doodling in the margins of my notes when it dawns on me - I have a soulmate! They haven’t responded to any of my messages this year, but maybe they’ll answer a plea for help.

As soon as class ends, I sprint back to Mummer’s House and find the Soul Pen that Penny gave me. (It’s wedged in the back of my nightstand, behind a Mint Aero bar I stole from Baz.) I pull the cap off with my teeth as I yank up my sleeve, scrawling mostly-legible words.

_Are you there?_

_I need your help_

I wait for a few minutes, but there’s no reply.

_I don’t have anywhere to go for Christmas_

_I know you haven’t been answering_

I move to writing closer towards my elbow.

_I’m sorry I ignored you when we were younger_

_I didn’t know_

_I really need your help though_

My letters are big and somewhat slanted, and I’ve run out of places to write legibly on my forearm, so I take off my shirt and move up to my bicep.

_Can you tell me who you are?_

_Are we allowed to do that?_

_Please, are you there?_

After a few more minutes without a response, I put my shirt back on and uncap the pen one last time. I draw a small heart on the pad of my thumb, just in case my soulmate is wearing long sleeves and can’t see anything else.

**Baz**

As always, I’m the first one to arrive in the locker room. I like to go through warmups on my own before everyone else arrives, it gives me time to clear my head of Simon Snow, to remind myself to be human in my speed and movements, and it makes me look good in the eyes of Coach Mac, like a leader. Even though my time with the Numpties has kept me off of the team for the start of the season, I am still determined to show everyone that I deserve to be here too. I’ve been permitted to join practices, and I am going to do so no matter how much my leg throbs afterwards.

Usually, I’m grateful to be alone while I change simply because it spares me the torture of having to listen to my crass teammates discuss whichever girl they have chosen to ogle that week, but today I find myself almost lightheaded with relief that the locker room is empty, because as I shed my uniform, I discover that my arm is once again covered in messy blue writing.

_Are you there?_

_I need your help_

_I don’t have anywhere to go for Christmas_

_I know you haven’t been answering_

_I’m sorry I ignored you when we were younger_

_I didn’t know_

_I really need your help though_

_Can you tell me who you are?_

_Are we allowed to do that?_

_Please, are you there?_

The writing is appalling, as it always is, and my heart wrenches. I _know_ that Simon Snow is not my soulmate. There is no universe in which I get what I want. No universe in which I am not disappointed and in which I do not serve as the greatest disappointment to someone else. 

But the messy scrawl on my arms looks so much like the penmanship of the boy that I’m in love with that when a small heart appears on the palm of my hand I allow myself to leave it there for the rest of practice. I cover the other words with a long sleeved athletic shirt before slipping on my jersey, but I keep the heart visible to sneak glances at it as we run drills. 

When I score a goal during our scrimmage I look down briefly and pretend that Simon, sitting in the stands, wrote it while cheering for me, a secret message just between the two of us. Then, at the end of practice, I march back to our room, strip off my clothes without looking in the mirror, and shower myself back to reality.

**Simon**

It’s almost Christmas break, and I’m running out of options. I’ve been writing to my soulmate every single day, but they haven’t responded. I really don’t want to spend the next two weeks sleeping on the streets, and I don’t want to beg Penny’s mum to let me stay with them either. I’m at a loss for anything else to do, and so I do something that can only be described as rash.

“Penny,” I say around a mouthful of potatoes, “I need your help.”

The dining hall has filled up with most of the student body at this point, all the day’s classes are over and extracurriculars haven’t started yet. If I’m going to find my soulmate, I have to act right now.

“With what, Simon?” Penny immediately looks up from the assignment she was reviewing, her eyebrows raised at my tone.

“I need you to watch everyone and see who has writing on their face in just a second, okay?” “What are you- Simon, _no!_ You can’t do that!” Her eyes grow wide as she realizes what I’m about to do, and she starts yanking on my arm, trying to get me to put down the Soul Pen clasped in my hand.

“I have to Pen, I don’t have any other choice!” I try to bring my hand to my forehead, but as I pause to consider what I’m going to write ( _WHO ARE YOU?_ maybe), Penny grabs my elbow.

“No, Simon! Just stop and think about what you’re doing!”

“I have thought about it!” “Then think about it some more!” Penny hisses, but this time I turn away so she can’t reach me over the table, and before she can get up and run around to my chair I write on my face _PROPERTY OF SIMON SNOW_.

I’m pretty sure that most of the letters are going the right way, but it’s harder than I thought it would be without a mirror, and one of the _S_ ’s might be backwards. _PROPERTY_ is written across my forehead, then when that took up all of the space I had planned to use I wrote _OF_ between my eyebrows and _SIMON SNOW_ across my cheeks.

By the time I’m done, Penny has made it around to my side of the table and is attacking my face with a wet napkin, trying to wipe the ink off.

“Penny, stop, wait, I have to see who it is! I need to find my soulmate!”

“No! Simon, not like this. What are you even thinking? This isn’t okay, you can’t just do this to them!”

I wriggle out of her grasp, but it’s too late; when I dump the rolls off of the silver tray in the center of the table and hold it up to my face all of the words are gone.

I’m about to turn back to Penny to try and explain why I _need_ to find out who my soulmate is, when out of the corner of my eye I see Baz sneaking out the doors.

“Baz knows something! I have to go!”

Behind me, I can hear Penny saying, “He may just be done with dinner Simon, leave him alone!” but I am confident I’m right. Baz must have seen my writing appearing on someone’s face, and I’m going to find out who it was.

**Baz**

I have to leave.

I have to get out of here, I have to go somewhere else, I have to make sure no one saw, I need to keep Snow from doing anything like this ever again.

I couldn’t figure out what Simon was doing at first, I was just distracted by the fact that he and Bunce were arguing over something. Niall realized it first, he saw the words appearing on my face and yanked my head down, pulling me as if to look for something that had fallen under the table while hiding my face from everything else.

“Give me water, wet a napkin,” I heard him whisper to Dev, but when I tried to look up and ask what was going on, he shoved my head back down.

“Baz, it’s your soulmate. There’s writing on your face. We’ve got to get it off.”

Niall is a good lad. He’s not technically part of the Old Families, he wasn’t raised into the same stoic circles that Dev and I were, but he’s good in a crisis. His voice was steady, and there was no frantic emotion on his face as he told me what was going on in short, clipped sentences while attempting to clean my face.

“Snow just wrote on his face with a Soul Pen.” “What did he-”

“We need to clean your face now.”

“Please don’t tell-”

“It’s going to be fine, no one will know.”

“I don’t-”

“Penelope is getting the ink off of him, it’s going to be okay.”

“You can’t-”

“All done. You can look up now, Baz. It’s alright.”

I pull my head out from under the table and try to look around surreptitiously. Luckily, whatever Snow and Bunce were doing was enough to draw everyone’s attention away from me, but I can’t tamp down the panic numbing my face and zinging through my body.

Niall is a good man, and I clap him on the shoulder and try to thank him, but I’m not sure I fully succeed as I attempt to walk out of the dining hall at a reasonable pace. I feel like I’m forcing myself to walk through molasses, being pulled back from running like I want to by the elastic bands of social expectation. If I run, people will look at me. As it is, only one person has noticed I’ve left.

Unfortunately, that person is Simon Snow.

**Simon**

I catch up with Baz just as he rounds the edge of the Weeping Tower. I know he knows something, and I’m not going to let him get away this time. I’ve spent the last month and a half chasing him down and trying to get answers out of him, and I’m not going to fail this time.

“Baz!” My voice echoes off the stone wall beside us, and he walks faster, ignoring me. “Baz! Who is it? I know you saw, tell me who it is!”

He stops for a moment and then whirls around, glaring at me.

“What do you want, Snow?”

He’s such a prick.

“I know you know who my soulmate is, tell me!”

His face is paler than I’ve ever seen it, and I can tell that he’s nervous, but I don’t know why.

“Oh really? You think I know who your soulmate is? And why is that?”

He’s sneering, and I want to smush my hand into his face.

“You left! You saw who it was, and then you left!” “Maybe I left because I didn’t want to be forced to watch any more of your unnecessary dramatics!” “You’re one to talk!” We’re both yelling now.

He arches an eyebrow. “And what do you think you mean by _that?_ ”

I want to jump him, knock him over, pin him to the ground right now; I’m so agitated I can feel my magic starting to smoke.

“You’re dramatic all the time! You just, you, you’re- urgh, you can’t just-”

I give up trying to string words together, and just punch him.

Unfortunately, Baz is a vampire, and he has superhuman reflexes. He usually holds back and doesn’t use his full speed or strength, but I’ve barely started to move my fist before his hand comes up to grab it. I try to swing at him with my other arm, but he grabs me again, and we spend a few moments locked together grappling, both pushing and trying to connect with the other’s face.

Finally, Baz pushes my fist back into my own face, and I have just enough time to register that I’m still holding my uncapped Soul Pen and I can feel it dragging down my cheek before I see the blue line appear on Baz’s face too.

In my shock I stop pushing, and suddenly the mark on Baz’s skin swooshes down his jawline as he pushes my hand without any resistance. I somehow end up on my back, and since Baz still has a hold on my fist and my forearm he gets pulled down with me.

“What are you doing?” He pushes back and tries to stand, but our legs are tangled, and he falls back into me. I use what little leverage I have to roll us both over, and I stare wide-eyed down at him from my new perch on his chest.

“Snow, get off me, what is wrong with you?”

He’s furious, but I don’t think he’s fully caught on yet, he doesn’t realize I can see the mark on his face. I’m so sure there’s a matching one on mine, I felt the sharp drag of the pen, but I have to be sure.

I reach out to where the Soul Pen fell, and his eyes grow wide with realization as I pick up his hand. For the first time, I’m seeing Baz without his usual mask. He’s not sneering, he’s not haughty, he’s not confident. He looks… scared. Like he’s worried about what I’m going to do to him. He looks like when you realize you can’t face what’s about to happen, but there’s no way out. Suddenly, Baz isn’t a villain.

He’s just a boy.

He’s a boy that I’ve obsessed over, and who I spent two months worrying about at the start of the school year. He’s a boy who studies hard because it would have made his mother proud, and he keeps his side of the room tidy because he genuinely believes that he should. He’s a boy who was bitten and Turned, but who I’m pretty sure has never touched another human and drinks rats from the Catacombs instead. He’s a prick and a jerk and a posh tosser, but he’s also dedicated and clever and ruthless, and as I draw two curving lines on the palm of his hand only to watch them appear on my own palm, I realize he is also my soulmate.

**Baz**

Simon Snow is looking down at me with an indecipherable expression on his face, and I have never been so scared in my life. I’ve spent years planning what I would do before he killed me, how I would grab his face and kiss him as he plunged his sword into my heart, but now that it’s about to happen I can’t move. I’m pinned under him, completely frozen, helpless to do anything other than stare at him as he picks up my hand and writes on it. His mouth is slightly open ( _mouth-breather, always_ ), his eyes are such a plain and vivid blue, and I’ve just accepted that I won’t kiss him, that instead I’ll only be able to look into his eyes as the wind plays with his curls while he stabs me, when he startles me by looking right back into my eyes and whispering, “ _Baz._ ”

All I can do is stare at him, watching as he looks back and forth from our hands to my eyes, and then he does the unthinkable.

 _He_ kisses _me_.

**Simon**

I’m kissing a boy.

I’m kissing my soulmate.

I’m kissing _Baz_.

I pull back.

“Baz. I, did you-”

I can’t find any more words, I don’t even know what I want to say, so I just lean back in and kiss him once more. He’s unmoving, and I start to worry that maybe I’ve gone too far, that maybe I was wrong, but when I pull back again he whispers, “ _Simon_ ,” and suddenly his hands shoot up into my hair and he presses us back together.

After a few minutes, we breathlessly separate. I’m still straddling him, sitting right above his hips, and Baz leans back on his elbows, his hair wild from where I ran my fingers through it.

“Hi,” I say, and immediately want to kick myself. _Hi?_ Who says _Hi_ after kissing their sworn-nemisis-slash-soulmate for the first time?

“Hello,” Baz responds, sounding as cool as ever, but his cheeks are faintly pink, which I think means that he must be blushing almost as much as I am.

“Umm, should we, maybe… talk, or something?”

I start fidgeting, then realize that I’m playing with the buttons of Baz’s shirt and pull my hands back as if they’ve been burned.

“What do you want to talk about, Snow?”

How can he look so unaffected? (Other than his mussed hair. And his pink cheeks. And his wrinkled shirt from where I grabbed it.)

“You’re the clever one, take a guess,” I say as I glare down at him. “Not here, though.” I slide off of him and clamber to my feet, suddenly self conscious. “Let’s go back to our room?”

He raises an eyebrow at me, and I reach a hand down to help him up. He ignores me and stands on his own.

“Fine, let’s get back to our room.”

A bolt of awkward panic hits us both at the same time, and we each look at the ground. ‘Our room’ has never sounded like that before, like a place that we might go _together_.

The walk back seems to take ages, but when we reach the top of the stairs and stop on the landing in front of our door it suddenly seems like it’s over too quickly. I haven’t thought of a single thing to say yet, and the second we cross that threshold I feel like everything is going to change.

Baz hesitates beside me, but then he opens the door and gestures for me to go first. I step through and can’t help but brace myself for whatever cataclysmic event is about to take place, but Baz simply follows me inside and the door clicks shut behind us.

“Er,” I start, scuffing the toe of my trainer into the floor. I want to pace, but that would bring me too close to where Baz is now sitting on the edge of his bed, holding himself just a little too still to look as casual as I’m sure he wants to be. “Can you start?”

“It was your idea to talk, and now you want me to do it?” He raises that one infuriating eyebrow at me, and I can feel my stomach sink. “Fine.”

He examines his nails, then looks me straight in the eyes.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“What?” I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t _that_.

“No! We just kissed, why do you think I would kill you?”

Both of his eyebrows shoot up this time.

“You’ve been threatening to kill me since we were eleven.”

What is wrong with him?

“But that was before! I don’t want to kill you!”

“You don’t?” His face is a mask of cool disinterest, but the illusion is starting to slip just a little. I think he might actually be scared.

“No, Baz, I don’t want to kill you.” I hesitate for a moment, then push off of my desk to sit on his bed. He freezes as the mattress dips, but I press on. “I never actually wanted to kill you. I kept being told that I was going to have to, but I didn’t want to. And I was worried about you.”

Baz’s forehead is wrinkling in confusion now, and I’m realizing that this might be the most open I have ever seen him.

“You were worried about me?”

“Yeah. When you didn’t come back to school I tore the place apart looking for you. Then, when you did finally make it back, you looked horrible. I didn’t know where you were, and I didn’t know what happened, and I was worried.”

He looks down at his hands, clasped in his lap, and I struggle to stay where I am, to not squirm or move any closer.

“I was kidnapped,” he whispers, so low I almost don’t hear him.

“You were kidnapped?” I repeat, absolutely dumbstruck.

“By numpties,” he adds.

“By _numpties?_ ” I say, a little too loud.

He looks back up at me with a guarded expression, and we both have a moment of shock when we realize how much closer to him I’ve moved in the last few seconds. Baz is still facing forward, with his feet flat on the floor, but I’ve turned sideways and drawn one knee up onto his mattress, and it’s only millimeters away from pressing into his thigh. He looks back down.

“Did they hurt you?” I whisper, not knowing what else to ask.

“I don’t think they meant to. They did something to my leg though, and it didn’t heal quite right.” “That’s why you’ve been limping.” He just nods. “I’m sorry I didn’t know. I would have saved you.”

Baz makes a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.

“I’m sure you would have. And then you would have opened the coffin - they kept me in a _coffin_ , by the way, because you were right all along, Simon - and you would have run me through with your sword.”

“No, I wouldn’t have.” I don’t even think before denying it. Then I realize: “You called me Simon.”

“I did not.” “Did so.”

“Did not. And that’s what you’re focusing on? I thought you would be running to the Mage by now to have me staked, or at least to have my wand snapped.”

**Baz**

I feel like I’m about to shake apart and fly into a million pieces, but I have to get this over with. If Simon is going to kill me, or have me killed, or hurt me in any way, I need to know right now. I need it to happen before this goes any further, before I allow myself to hope any more.

“Why would I do that?”

The poor idiot looks genuinely confused, as if he couldn’t possibly imagine ever turning me in for being a dark creature, despite threatening to do just that for the last three years.

“Because you swore that you would on multiple occasions.” It’s work not to roll my eyes at him, honestly, no matter how scared I am right now.

“But, you’re my soulmate.”

He says it simply, like it solves everything. And perhaps, in his mind, it does. Those three little words, _you’re my soulmate_ , are supposed to change everything for a mage. When you find your soulmate it’s supposed to be happily ever after, and I’m sure that Simon has bought into that fairytale just as readily as he believes everything else. (He is incredibly gullible.) But for me, nothing has changed. My heart is probably going to be broken in a more painful way than I could have previously predicted, but other than that everything is exactly the same.

“But you hate me.”

“No.” He shakes his head, and I watch his curls bounce. “I mean, yeah, a little. I used to. But I haven’t properly hated you for ages. Do you hate me?”

This is it. His eyes are so blue, and he’s looking at me so openly, and he’s so lovely and perfect that I can feel my resolve crumble away, every ounce of self-protection falling into the ocean of my love for him.

“No. I don’t hate you.”

He smiles.

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Good. I don’t hate you, and you don’t hate me.”

I arch an eyebrow at him, and he tries to mimic me, but just succeeds in raising both of his and looking a bit foolish.

I smile at him, and then give in.

“We match.”

His smile grows even bigger, and he grabs my hand. He flips our palms over to reveal two perfectly identical hearts written in blue ink. Then he presses them together, slots his fingers in between mine, and kisses me again.

“We match.”


End file.
